


salt or sugar

by cheekaspbrak



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Because I'm in denial, Crying, Eventual Fluff, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Nightmares, Richie Tozier Needs a Hug, Sharing a Bed, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Teenagers, Trauma, Which never happens, if you want to see Richie put through more hell than he's been through already click now, this is going to take place entirely before the second movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21786487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheekaspbrak/pseuds/cheekaspbrak
Summary: “Something the matter, Richie? I thought you liked me?” Eddie asked in a voice that wasn’t his own, skin melting off of bone as he pulled away from Richie’s mouth, a brown string of spit connecting them both. “I always knew you were a faggot, Richie.” Flies buzzed, hundreds, thousands, crawling in the flesh as it puddled on the ground. “Just a little fucking fairy. It’s disgusting. If I touch you, I’ll probably —He still flinched when Eddie touched him, even a year later.ORPennywise can shapeshift into anything, even the people you love.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 128





	1. July, 1990

**Author's Note:**

> This is supposed to be a lot of sweet and short moments between Richie and Eddie. I have kind of a 5 times + 1 vibe in mind, but there probably won't be that many chapters!

Skipping rocks at the Quarry, making art out of chewed bubblegum on the back wall of the arcade, catching frogs down by the little creek next to the kissing bridge. This was how he’d spent every summer before Pennywise. He was a normal little boy, playing Street Fighter and teasing Stan about his bird brain. 

Then that fucking clown showed up.

They were all a little broken after that.

Richie was sure they all had nightmares — Bill had spoken about Georgie a few times since then, about how hard it was to move on, how sometimes he’d hear his voice in the middle of the night and wake up in a cold sweat. Mike would encourage everyone to share their struggles with the group to help themselves heal. Sometimes they did. Ben would talk about missing Bev now that she’d gone away to live with her aunt. Eventually, though it took him a while to fess up, he’d talk about how the nightmares of her hair on fire, skin rotting, chasing him down the school hallway would cloud over his memory of her until every time he thought of her he was a little scared and nauseous. 

Richie understood that better than anyone else there. 

He’d been in the clubhouse, reading a comic by himself and waiting for one of the others to show up and entertain him. He was hoping it would be Eddie. He was always hoping it would be Eddie. 

Lo and behold, it was Eddie. This was unexpected — he hadn’t seen him since he broke his arm and his mother whisked him away and certainly didn’t expect to see him anytime soon. It was also unexpected because he hadn’t heard him come down the ladder, hadn’t even seen him in his peripheral vision until he saw him moving in the dark corner of the clubhouse. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought he’d materialized in that dark corner. 

He should have known better.

It was all so confusing, a little off-kilter, with Eddie plopping down in the hammock beside him and giggling at his jokes sweetly and girlishly without firing back like he normally would. And then he’d pressed up against Richie, looked him dead in the eye when he’d jerked back, and said  _ ‘What? Don’t you want me to kiss you?’ _ , and then he kissed him and kissed him until Richie thought he was suffocating — wait, no, he  _ was  _ suffocating, he was  _ suffocating,  _ Eddie was  _ killing  _ him, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t  _ breathe _ _ — _

_ “Something the matter, Richie? I thought you liked me?”  _ Eddie asked in a voice that wasn’t his own, skin melting off of bone as he pulled away from Richie’s mouth, a brown string of spit connecting them both.  _ “I always knew you were a faggot, Richie.”  _ Flies buzzed, hundreds, thousands, crawling in the flesh as it puddled on the ground.  _ “Just a little fucking fairy. It’s  _ disgusting.  _ If I touch you, I’ll probably _ _ — _

He still flinched when Eddie touched him, even a year later. 

His brain, often simple-minded when cornered and petrified, would fight with itself, trying to decide if Eddie was a safe place or a shape-shifting monster. Every time he saw Eddie, it took the carousel in his brain a few minutes to wind down, even when he actively sought him out.

Even when he was tapping incessantly on his window at nearly one o’clock in the morning. His stomach still lurched when the shadowy figure of him swung open the curtains and stared at Richie, who was clinging to the trunk of the tree outside of his window like a koala. 

“It’s late,” He said when he opened the window, reaching a hand out to help Richie in. Richie hesitated, staring at the hand and awaiting melting flesh.

“I know, sorry,” He answered, shifting his grip on the tree. “It takes a long time to please a woman like your mother.”

Eddie retched. “Please, you’re not even charming enough to get my  _ mother,  _ of all people.”

Richie grabbed onto his hand, then, allowing himself to be haphazardly pulled through the window. “Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall,” Eddie pleaded. Richie fell anyway. “Fuck you,” Eddie replied, staring at him in a heap on the ground, pausing for a moment to listen for Mrs. K’s snores down the hallway.

“You certainly do not possess the same tender love as your mother,” Richie quipped, pulling himself off the ground while Eddie crossed the room. “I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.”

“It’s not my fault you decided to sneak over here in the middle of the night,” Eddie answered. 

_ Actually, it is,  _ Richie wanted to say, thinking of the nightmare he’d had. Eddie sucking face with him until he was holding him down, cutting off all oxygen until he’d woken up — panting and sweating. He could hardly see, with how dark the room is, but he could hear the slide of the drawers where Eddie was standing. He pulled off his shirt, used it to wipe the sweat off of his forehead. 

“Here,” Eddie said as he stuffed a pair of bed shorts and the most over-sized t-shirt he owned into Richie’s hands. Richie was a bit surprised he hadn’t asked why he was here, yet. He almost always did. Maybe he was tired of never getting a real answer out of him.

“Have you grown at all since eighth grade?” The shorts were embarrassingly small. They’d be long on Eddie, but they were definitely shorter than anything Richie would dare to wear. He really needed to remember to bring pajamas one of these times.

“You’re so tall you could practically just stand on your tippy-toes to get through my window! I’m average height for a boy my age!” He pulled back the covers and tossed himself into the bed.

“Keep it down, pipsqueak. Mrs. K needs her rest after what I did to her, you don’t want to be responsible for waking her up.” Richie used his hands to shoo Eddie to the other side of the bed after he put his glasses on the nightstand.

“That’s the third joke you’ve made about her in five minutes. I’m cutting you off. You’re becoming more insufferable every day.” He moved over and lifted the covers up for Richie, who immediately stuffed himself into the small sliver of bed left for him. Eddie bitched about how difficult it is to share a bed with him ever since he had his growth spurt before finally settling down on his side of the bed.

“Has she been bad lately?” He asked, turning on his side to take up as little room as possible. His eyes adjusted to the very dim lighting filtering in from the hallway under the crack of the door, and he could see Eddie, in the He-Man shirt he’s had since seventh grade that he could still fit into, somehow. He could see the way his eyebrows furrow, like a grumpy old man, the way they always have, accompanied by a small, fretful frown.

“Yeah, she’s been bad,” He admitted. “She won’t give it a rest on the meds, lately. Always wailing about how disrespectful I am when she’s ‘just trying to protect me’.” He put air quotes around the last part, rolling his eyes as he did so.

“Want me to take her out?” Richie formed his hands into a gun, making little  _ ‘pew pew’  _ noises that get a few giggles out of Eddie.

“No,” Eddie laughed, “I just have to get through high school, right?”

“Then we’ll get the hell out of this shithole. You and me, Eds.” Richie watched Eddie glance at the bedroom door, then back into his eyes. 

“I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here,” He admitted, voice low and only dropping lower. “She’s suffocating me.” 

He looked so fearful, eyes wide and shiny in the soft light. Richie was still not entirely aware of the power of Sonia Kaspbrak, of the limits she would go to if it meant keeping Eddie under her control. He didn’t need to know these things to hate her with the passion he did, though. He only needed to see how small Eddie became when he spoke of her to know all he ever needed to know about Mrs. Kaspbrak.

“Spaghetti, listen up,” Richie started, reaching out for one of his hands splayed in the space between them, “I’ll drag you by your ear out of this town the second we graduate. She can follow me the whole time bitching and moaning, I don’t care. You, Edward Spaghetti Kaspbrak, are destined for much greater things than what Derry has in store for you.”

Eddie stared at him in shocked silence for quite some time, likely because it was rare that Richie ever said something like this (though it was becoming more and more common as they grew up), but all Richie could think was  _ I’m holding his hand, he’s holding my hand, does he think this is weird? Is my hand sweaty? Will he pull his hand away? _

“So you’ll come with me?” Eddie finally spoke, face smushing further into his pillow. “When we graduate, I mean.”

There were a lot of things Richie wanted to say. There were  _ always _ a lot of things Richie wanted to say. It was hard to hold back a lot of the things clinking around in his brain, beating against his skull, trying to wiggle their way to the forefront of his thoughts. He wanted to say  _ ‘I’ll go anywhere you go’,  _ or maybe  _ ‘I’d have to check with Mrs. K first, you know how needy she gets’,  _ or even  _ ‘I love you and don’t think I could live without you’. _

That last one made his cheeks burn hot and his eyes sting at the corners. That one was certainly not an option. None of the others were, either, he decided.

“What’s Bill without Ted? There’s no Richie without Eddie."

“You’re stupid,” Eddie giggled, but he seemed pleased with the answer, and that was all Richie could ask for.


	2. January, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.  
> — Richard Siken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... think I'm happy with this chapter? I've gotten to the point where I know if I spend too much time worrying over a chapter I'll just make it worse and never post it, so here it is!

Mike was moving away. His grandfather wanted to move to Florida, somewhere Mike had always dreamed of going, and Richie was really, really happy for him. So happy.

But his chest felt like it was being cracked open every time he thought of Mike leaving. It felt like everything was changing, too much, too fast. Like one by one, year by year the Losers were going to disappear until it was just… Richie.

You see, Bev had stopped calling or sending letters when she moved away. Richie could only imagine how heartbroken Ben was over this. He didn’t have to imagine too much, though.

Not a single soul on this earth would ever know- besides Richie and his mother- how he cried when she returned from the mailbox for the 46th day in a row without a single letter addressed to him. What had he expected, anyway? For Bev to remain friends with her middle school buddies for the rest of her life?

No.

That was stupid.

When he got over his crying fit, he’d rang Beverly’s Aunt’s house, because he knew he was just being silly. She hadn’t written or called, but she was probably just busy. Her Aunt had answered with a monotone, automated greeting:

_ “Hello, this is Susan Samford. With whom am I speaking?” _

_ “Oh, hi,” Richie answered, twirling the phone cord around his finger, “This is Richie Tozier. I’m just calling to talk to Beverly.” _

_ The phone rustled and Richie could make out a few far away voices before Bev’s Aunt returned to the call, “I’m sorry, honey. She says she doesn’t know anyone named Richie.” _

_ Richie desperately tried to keep her on the line, “Oh, could I just talk to her for a second? I’m a-” But before he could even finish the first sentence, the phone went dead. _

He’d cried even more, then, into his pillow that he used to muffle the sounds so his mother wouldn’t come in and try to comfort him in a way that only made it worse. Unlike the last time, the only soul on this earth that would ever know would be him, because he was Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier and he had a reputation to keep up. What’s one more skeleton stuffed into a closet that already has hundreds? It turns out that it’s easier to hide things than it is to tell the truth.

And here Mike was, pulling away, too. 

They all had a sleepover together before he left. It was filled with a lot of good moments, and quite a few tears, too. Richie hugged him for far longer than necessary and kept swallowing around the massive lump in his throat until he could finally manage to make Mike promise to write to him and call as often as he could. Mike promised, even pinky-promised, hugged Richie one last time. And then he left.

Richie sent a letter almost as soon as he got home after seeing him off. He filled it with lots of little inside jokes, made sure to ask a lot of questions about Florida, and put a little doodle of the two of them at the bottom of the letter. Mike never wrote back.

That was how he found himself, after 57 days without a letter or returned call (no matter how many times Mike’s grandfather said  _ ‘Well, I’ll tell him you called’ _ ), lying in bed, eyes swollen and red, staring up at the ceiling and sniffling and trying not to hate Bev and Mike. Part of himself really wanted to hate them, but another part couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t want to remember Derry, either.

His door creaked open, and he worried, for a moment, that his mother had overheard despite his efforts to keep the crying sounds to a minimum. It wasn’t his mom, though, he realized when the door opened all the way and revealed a pint-sized, irritated Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Your mom let me in,” He explained, hand still on the knob.

“Oh,” Richie answered, shifting uneasily in the bed. The room was dark and the light from the hallway made Eddie look like a dark, shadowy figure, eyes shining ominously. Richie felt his chest tighten and his lungs freeze as he waited for him to speak.

“What are you doing?” Eddie snapped, and the air held in Richie’s chest released in one quick exhale. “You skipped out on meeting up with all of us just to sit on your room…” He looked around the room in one sweeping motion, “...and do nothing?”

“ _ ‘Nothing’  _ is not a very nice thing to call your mother, Eds,” Richie snickered, but he could hear it fall flat in the serious air of the room. Even without his glasses, he could  _ feel  _ how annoyed Eddie was.

“Jesus, Rich,” Eddie said, pinching his nose. “Have you ever considered  _ apologizing  _ when you do something wrong instead of making a joke? Or are you just completely incapable of sincerity?”

The chest-cracking feeling came back. Richie felt tears threaten the corners of his eyes so he rolled over onto his stomach and stuffed his face in his pillow. It was enough to make Eddie shift his demeanor.

“Rich?” He said, much softer than it had been before.

“I’m  _ sorry,” _ Richie tried, but his voice splintered and cracked around the edges. The sounds of Eddie’s feet grew closer until the bed dipped underneath his weight.

“Talk to me, asshole.” Richie could feel the mattress move more as Eddie laid down on his back next to him and just the thought that someone would  _ care _ enough to ask him what was wrong and lay with him until they got an answer was enough to make hot tears soak the fabric of his pillowcase. He pushed his face further into the pillow, so beyond embarrassed. It was hard, though, to keep the shuddering breaths quiet, to keep his shoulders from shaking, and he could pinpoint the exact moment that Eddie realized he was crying. He heard the sharp, little inhale next to his ear, and he half expected Eddie to come up with a reason to leave the room, to ‘give him space’ or something, but instead he felt a hand against his back, stroking up and down.

Everything poured out of him like a tidal wave.

Like a little baby, he started hiccuping and crying into the pillow under him, stubbornly refusing to move his face. Eddie didn’t ask him to, though, just laid there and rubbed his back and brushed through the hair at the base of his neck until Richie finally spoke.

“Why do they keep  _ forgetting  _ about me?” He asked the pillow. The pillow didn’t answer, and neither did Eddie for quite some time. His hand paused its movements on his back.

_ “Forget-  _ Rich, are you talking about Bev and Mike?” Richie felt an embarrassed heat burn in his stomach and he really wanted to backtrack out of this conversation more than anything.

“It’s just… I haven’t heard from Bev in almost a year. And… and Mike never returns my calls. And now  _ Stan’s  _ family is considering moving and do you think- He… He might forget about me, too.” He finally,  _ finally  _ lifted his head out of his pillow to look at a very blurry and startled Eddie, who seemed to just now realize Richie really  _ had  _ been crying, like it was surprising that he wasn’t just a robot who told shitty jokes. Richie supposed it probably  _ was  _ surprising. 

Eddie lifted a hand up and put it into Richie’s hair, the palm resting over his ear in a soothing way. He looked at him the same way he did when Richie was having a heart attack when he saw the missing poster of himself in the Neibolt house, but this time he wasn’t just staring, he was stroking his thumb over Richie’s temple in soothing sweeps.

“They… They didn’t forget about you, Richie. They just got busy. Life gets busy in high school. They  _ love  _ you.” It sounded a bit like listening to the ocean through a shell, the way Eddie was rubbing his head. He closed his eyes against the headache that had been building up ever since he took off his glasses.

“It’s been a  _ year, _ Eds,” Richie whispered, eyes searching Eddie’s for  _ anything  _ to prove him wrong, but it’s not there. “It’s not just me. It’s everyone. When’s the last time  _ you  _ heard from Bev? Mike? They… they moved on, and I can’t blame them. But that means everyone else is going to do that, too. That means  _ you’re _ going to do it.” He sat up and continued speaking before Eddie could start talking again. “And Eddie, Eds, Spaghetti, I know I make a lot of stupid jokes about you and your mother and other dumb shit but… you are my  _ best  _ friend. And I know Bill is yours, and that’s okay, but I just… I think I might explode if you move away and forget about me too.” He looked at Eddie, who had also sat up next to him, through a sideways glance to see how he took this new information. He thought back to the R+E on the kissing bridge, surrounded by thousands of other carvings, and suddenly it didn’t feel like that was enough to solidify that there once was a Richie and Eddie. Suddenly it felt like Richie was far too easy to forget about, that even a permanent wood carving would disappear when Richie was away from it for too long.

“First of all,” Eddie started, looking thoroughly confused, “Bill is not my best friend. I mean, yes, I love Bill and he was my best friend for a long time but… Richie… he’s not welcome in my room in the middle of the night, you are. He’s _ certainly  _ not welcome in my bed any time he pleases, you are, even with your stinky, sweaty feet and  _ insufferable _ jokes. Because  _ you’re  _ my best friend, and even if you won’t tell me  _ why  _ you keep coming over in the middle of the night, I’m still gonna give you my pajamas and half of my bed. Second of all, best friends don’t forget about each other.”

Richie felt himself getting worked up again. “Mike and Bev were our-”

“It’s different for us,” Eddie said, like it was clear as day what that meant. Richie shut his mouth and turned to look at him fully. 

“It is?” He cocked his head to the side, waiting for some sort of answer. Eddie offered nothing aside from a bashful smile and a little shrug. Richie found himself nodding even without an explanation, “Yeah, it is.” Then he stuck out his pinky. “Promise you won’t forget about me?”

“I promise, Rich,” Eddie agreed, wrapping his pinky around Richie’s own. Then, he turned over and plucked the glasses off the nightstand and slid them onto Richie’s face. “Haven’t I told you a million times that you get a headache so bad that you start puking when you take off your glasses?”

Richie huffed and pushed them up his nose. “And you say  _ I’m  _ insufferable.” 

Eddie rolled his eyes but he was smiling, bright and beautiful, and Richie thought that years from now when he moved away from Derry, with or without Eddie, he would never be able to forget that smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someday I've really gotta stop writing things before I know where I'm going with it


	3. September, 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.  
> — Richard Siken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wowza. well, to make my excuse short and sweet I was screwed over by lexapro. I tried it, hated it, tried fluoxetine, hated it, and now I'm trying to remember how to enjoy things again— like writing, drawing, dancing, laughing, all that good stuff. it's like my body has literally forgotten what it was like to live. that's why this chapter is so late, and i'll be lucky if the next chapter isn't late either. i really hope it's not. and i really hope you enjoy this one! please, please let me know if you enjoyed this chapter. don't lie to me, but i'm a praise addict and i'll definitely churn out more chapters quicker if i know someone is enjoying my rambles!

“Look at the tits on  _ her!”  _ Richie said, holding up the magazine in front of Eddie’s face. 

“Jesus  _ Christ,  _ Richie,” Stan groaned, turning over in the hammock that was directly behind Eddie and Richie’s heads.

“I don’t want to look at her tits,” Eddie batted away the magazine because it was in front of his comic.

“Yeah, you just want to look at Superman’s tits, huh?” Richie thumbed through the magazine, feigning interest for a few more moments before tossing it behind him and scooting a bit closer to Eddie.

“Superman doesn’t  _ have  _ tits, stupid. He has  _ pecs.” _ Eddie tapped the page where Superman was. Well, Clark Kent, in his glasses and buttoned-up shirt.

“Look at the pecs on  _ him!”  _ Richie shouted, earning a light kick in the head from Stan and a small giggle from Eddie. “You’re no fun, Stan. I miss Bev. At least I had a partner for all my shenanigans when she was around.”

“Shenanigans?” Eddie snorted just as Ben said, “Me too.”

“I know ya do, Benny-boy.” Richie stood up and moved over to where Ben was sitting, enjoying himself and reading some uninteresting book. “Heard anything from her, lately?”

Ben shrugged, a solemn and joyless thing. It was the same answer he’d been giving for quite some time, and Richie was pretty sure he knew what it meant.

“I haven’t heard anything from Bill, either,” Eddie murmured from behind his comic. He’d been waiting by the phone for a call from Bill for the past few months, only to hear nothing, just like the rest of them. And Eddie was a stubborn, angry little fuck, but he was torn up about it — even if he’d never, ever admit it. 

Though it was unspoken, Richie felt completely responsible for cheering him up at the sight of even the smallest frown. 

“He’s probably getting lots of action in  _ Wyoming.”  _ Richie rolled his eyes. “Too busy for his friends,” He grumbled, scooting across the floor again towards Eddie. He flopped his lanky body across Eddie’s lap. 

“Get off, Trashmouth!” Eddie screeched, shoving at Richie unsuccessfully. 

“C’mon, Eddiebear, you’ve gotta fill up your Richie quota before I move away and forget about everyone, too!” He squirmed delightedly in Eddie’s lap, ridiculously over-enthused with the attention he was receiving.

“Fuck off, Richie. You’re not moving away, dipshit.” Eddie stopped pushing and settled for resting his comic against Richie’s shoulder, flicking through at a rate that he could certainly not be absorbing the information.

“I’m not really in control of that decision, Eds,” Richie said, using the muscles in his neck to pull his head forward and look up at Eddie. It wasn’t an attractive angle, necessarily. He could see right up Eddie’s nose. It was still cute when Eddie dropped his comic book and scrunched his face at an awkward angle to look down at Richie.

“You’re  _ not  _ moving, are you?” It was ridiculously endearing, how sad Eddie sounded.

“Who’s moving?” Stan asked, head suddenly popping over the edge of the hammock. “What  _ are  _ you two doing?”

“No one is moving,” Richie answered as he was finally shoved off of Eddie who was now flushed from Stan’s interrogating. “I was kidding,” He added, for good measure.

Ben cleared his throat from the corner of the room. “Actually…” He trailed off, waiting for everyone to look his way. "My family is moving in November.”

_ “What?”  _ Stan spit, sitting fully upright in the hammock.

“My mom wants to go to Albuquerque and, like Richie said, it’s out of my control.” Ben did not look very enthused.

“Where the fuck is Albuquerque?” Richie frowned, making his way into an upright position as well.

“New Mexico, idiot,” Eddie said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Bill moving was the nail in the coffin of the Losers Club, but Stan, Ben, Eddie, and Richie had formed their own little club — The Leftovers Club. That’s what Richie called it in his head. Because that’s what they were, weren’t they? The leftovers that everyone had left and forgotten about. 

Ben moving away meant they’d have to form a new club with a new name, and Richie was too lazy to do that.

“No,” He whined, but it didn’t really change the somber atmosphere in the room. 

“I’m going to miss you guys, though. I’ll make sure you all have my address and I’ll definitely write back.” Ben smiled at them and set down his book.

“Sure you will,” He heard Eddie grumble next to his ear, so quietly that there was no way Ben could hear it.

“We have to have a going away party,” Stan said, but he didn’t sound very enthusiastic. 

“Booze?” Richie asked, equally as half-hearted. 

“No booze, please,” Ben responded, and Richie deflated.

“Everything fucking sucks,” He decided.

They sat in silence for several more minutes before Eddie announced he was going home and Richie subsequently announced he was paying a visit to Mrs. Kaspbrak.

They both grabbed their bikes but opted to walk alongside them instead of riding them because they were both tired and the sun was setting.

“You’re sure you’re not moving anytime soon?” Eddie asked, looking over his shoulder at Richie who was straggling behind to look at a slug on the sidewalk.

“Gross,” Richie commented, jogging to catch up with Eddie. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. It’s not like Ol’ Mags or Went tell me anything.”

“I bet the slug looked at you and went — ” He turned to Richie and made a scrunched up face, “ — _ ’Gross’ _ .”

Richie giggled with delight and punched Eddie on the shoulder. “Good one, Eds!”

It’s something he’d always loved about Eddie — he was like a balancing force to Richie. He’d spit fire-fueled jokes right back at Richie, but he’d also calm him down when he was getting to be too much.

Eddie’s house was the closest one to the clubhouse, a fact Richie always hated. He loved to walk Eddie home. It made him feel, for a brief moment, like a gentleman in an old movie courting a lady. He was courting Eddie, in some weird, fucked up way. He both hoped Eddie would find out and also was terrified of Eddie — or anyone —  ever finding out. So he could only take the smallest moments, the walks home and play wrestling and late-night talks at sleepovers.

“Thanks for walking me home, Rich,” Eddie said and Richie thought that if this were normal, if  _ he _ was normal and Eddie was a girl this would be the part where they’d kiss goodnight. He thought that every time he dropped Eddie off at home.

“Anytime, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie responded, trying not to think about kissing him.

The final bit of sun set down over the horizon, and the sky went out like a light. The only light left was the streetlamp, casting a sallow glow over Eddie’s face. His eyes darkened in the shadows.

_ ‘What? Don’t you want me to kiss you?’ _

_ ‘I always knew you were a faggot, Richie.’ _

Richie flinched.  _ Stop thinking about kissing him, Richie. Stop it. Stop it. Stop stop stop stopstopstopstopstopst- _

“Are you okay, Richie?” Eddie asked. The nod Richie gave was automated.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Goodnight, Eds. Give Mrs. K a goodnight kiss for me.”

“Fuck you!” Eddie bellowed, walking his bike up to the front door. Richie waved at him from the sidewalk and Eddie beamed, big and bright, and waved back. 

Richie didn’t think he could ever stop thinking about kissing him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have an idea you think would fit well into this fic, that you'd like me to write, comment it below and I'll consider it! I love headcanons!  
> Talk to me on Tumblr @cheekaspbrak


End file.
